Immortal Wander

Series Metadata

Creator:
Series Begun:
2020-05-27
Series Updated:
2023-01-14
Description:

The 'canonical' stories about my Immortal!Wander headcanon. The main thing it posits is that Wander became a reluctant immortal demigod after the events of Shadow of the Colossus. It also offers a lot of Wander & Dormin friendshipping, playing around with name magic, and wild speculation about the rules and customs of the world that the Team ICO games are set in.

The series also had the working title "That Sad Team ICO Fic" for the longest time, so, uh. That should clue you in on the general tone here!

Notes:

Like the actual Team ICO games, each story is self-contained enough that you can read them in any order, as long as you're aware of the Important Details (and maybe the Additional Fun Facts) of the setting/series/headcanon, listed below. This is just a way to display their chronological order neatly. If you'd like to see a broader collection of works using this headcanon that includes meta, fanart, and crossovers, please check out the Immortal Wander Collection.

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Important Details:
* Wander has a large chunk of Dormin's soul still in him, which gives him horns, moderately enhanced strength, a constant telepathic connection to them that gets stronger with closer proximity/if he's praying, and most importantly has made him regeneratively immortal and ageless. This means that while things can kill him, after a while Dormin's soul revives and heals him, and he still appears as he did in Colossus - specifically as he appeared near the start of Colossus, since most of Dormin's soul that was stuffed in him by the end of the game is, well, within Dormin again.
** In essence this makes him more or less an adopted demigod. He has very mixed feelings about this.
** Dormin can't do anything about it because of the Ancient Sword's seal.

* Because of a botched exorcism ceremony that has yet to be detailed in the series, Mono is (1) the Queen of the Castle in the Mist, (2) has control over Wander through a compelling voice, and (3) has a screwed up sense of morality.

* The horned boys are caused by Dormin's influence, but it isn't intentional on their part. They're caused by the metaphysical equivalent of one of Dormin's breaths escaping through the Ancient Sword's seal and settling on some kid en utero.

Additional Fun Facts:
* "Wander" isn't actually his name. He considers himself nameless and thinks of himself as 'the wanderer'. Various other characters use various epithets and nicknames for him; "Wander" is fairly common and one he answers to, but it's effectively just what you call a nameless person where he's from.

* Most languages featured have pronouns meant specifically for use with divine entities; this is translated as characters using capitalised pronouns, including Dormin's self-perception using "Themself" and so on. Wander often doesn't as he's a surly old cuss who has very little patience for the divine.

* Despite being a surly old cuss, Wander's personality baseline is interpreted as being a very loving person who will do just about anything for the people he cares about. He's just been metaphorically kicked in the head a lot over the course of his long life.

* Dormin as they are in Colossus are interpreted as morally neutral/having a set of morals that don't always translate well to mortals' concerns.

* The Colossi nicknames are used for their creators. So, Gaius, for example, isn't the name of the third Colossus: it's the name of the deity who created it.

Stats:
Words:
44,781
Works:
5
Complete:
No
Bookmarks:
11

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